Women's History Month: Hazel Johnson
Hazel Johnson. Source: People for Community Recovery
This March, COS celebrates women in the region who have led the way for conservation and environmental justice.
words by Tiffany Clark
At the tail end of a month that recognizes both the struggles and achievements of women throughout history, it seems appropriate to celebrate the work of Chicago’s very own, Hazel Johnson. Affectionately known as the mother of environmental justice, her tireless work from the 1970s until her death in 2011 nurtured environmental justice from being a local idea to a global movement.
Her legacy began in Altgeld Gardens, a public housing project on the South Side. After learning that the South Side has the highest cancer rates of any area in the city (while personally dealing with this fact after her husband, among many neighbors, died prematurely from cancer), and after seeing all seven of her children suffer from asthma and skin conditions, she became set on understanding why. The answer turned out to be easy to find—Altgeld Gardens was built atop a landfill and surrounded by what Johnson later coined as a “toxic doughnut” of industrial facilities, from sewage treatment plants to chemical factories.
Disturbed by the impacts of environmental conditions on community members’ health, Johnson went on to form People for Community Recovery (PCR) in 1979, a pioneering organization that served to unite residents of surrounding communities experiencing similar impacts of environmental racism. Activists protested plans for new industrial polluters to move into the South Side and collected data on health trends in the affected communities to prove their health problems were caused by pollution. Word of Johnson’s and PCR’s work in the South Side had spread, and quickly, the environmental justice movement had taken the nation by storm.
Today, Cheryl Johnson, Hazel’s daughter, continues her mother’s work as director of PCR. Their current mission is still the same: educate the public about environmental racism and the importance of ensuring all are represented at tables of power, regardless of race or economic status. Today, Cheryl is taking her mother’s legacy one step further by emphasizing the importance of intersectionality in environmental justice work, especially concerning climate change.
Read more about PCR and their work here.